Japanese Paleolithic Hoax - Reaction

Reaction

It was widely reported in the foreign media that the revelation of Fujimura's duplicity shook Japanese lower and middle paleolithic research to its core, as much of it had been built on the foundation Fujimura had laid. It was also reported that prior to discovery of the hoax, Japan's paleolithic period was thought to have started earlier than anywhere else in Asia at around 700,000 BCE.

It is clear that a number of the artifacts found by Fujimura are rather unnatural and do not make archaeological sense, such as those exhumed from pyroclastic flow strata, but nonetheless majority archaeological groups as well as local and government organisations which substantially benefited from his find ignored these inconsistencies. There were also "finds" that were quite difficult to believe, such as stone implements in which the cross sections happened to match those of items found at sites tens of kilometers away. There was sharp criticism that such flawed items should not have been blindly accepted for so long.

Immediately after the hoax was discovered, the Japanese Archaeological Association formed a special committee which spent two and a half years reviewing the incident, releasing a report in May 2003 concluding that Fujimura's work was indeed the product of a hoax and admitting that, aside from few exception, majority fail at pointing inconsistencies of Fujimura's finds.